Quick report
Beautiful day starting off with good snow on all aspects. Natural and human-triggered wet loose avalanches were the most notable hazard. A weak upper snowpack structure on northerly aspects was reason enough to stay off steep, unsupported terrain with consequences in the runout below. While there doesn't seem to be many slab avalanches out there, more load and/or a stiffer slab could wake up a weak interface at the uppermost crust.
Snow cover is good enough in the open, or on more northerly aspects, but low and mid-elevation, forested terrain is near abysmal with soft new snow over dirt, rocks, logs, etc. If you need to get through this kind of terrain to get someplace else, stick to the summer trail if there is one.
Sluggish, skier-triggered wet loose on sun-warmed slopes. Did not take a very steep slope angle to get going, just needed to be > 35 degrees. Very slow to initiate but once they got going on the crust below the new snow there wasn't much stopping them.Weather
- Cloud Cover
- clear
- Wind Loading
- none
- Recent Snowfall
- 30
- Snow Avail For Transport
- large amounts
Clear, calm, and sunny. High clouds filtered the sun starting in the mid-afternoon. Strong westerly alpine winds were drifting snow high on Baker
Snowpack
Surface hoar to 5mm topping 25-35cm of F to 4F above a thin crust. A combination of stelars, small-grained facets, and rounding surface hoar at the top of the crust made for a poor bond with softer snow above- ECTP-9 at this interface. Tilt tests showed reactivity at a slight density change 15-20cm down from the surface - this may in fact be the new-old interface between snowfall on Feb 9-10 and Feb 13-14. Below is a crust-rounding facet matrix down to a thicker, knife-hard crust that was likely buried in late January. Solars showed rapid settlement once warmed, with a thin crust forming at the surface as soon as warming snow started to cool in the shade.
Avalanche
Scattered natural wet loose to D2 observed on east through southwest aspects at mid and upper elevations. Some sunny slopes had none while others had up to a half-dozen. No natural slab avalanches, and a single snowmobile triggered D1 in very steep, upper elevation terrain at Bearpaw.